Top 25 Amanda Gorman Quotes

Poetry and language are often at the heartbeat of movements for change.

I grew up at this incredibly odd intersection in Los Angeles, where it felt like the black ‘hood met black elegance met white gentrification met Latin culture met wetlands.

My speech impediment wasn’t a stutter but it was dropping several letters that I just could not say for several years, most specifically the ‘r’ sound.

I’m a student at Harvard University, and currently work as the United States Youth Poet Laureate, a community organizer, and an activist.

I was born early, along with my twin, and a lot of times, for infants, that can lead to learning delays.

This is a long, long, faraway goal, but 2036 I am running for office to be president of the United States. So you can put that in your iCloud calendar.

Writing wasn’t just a form of expression. It was a form of pathology by embarking on spoken word over and over and over again and reciting my poems.

When you are learning through poetry how to speak English, it lends to a great understanding of sound, of pitch, of pronunciation, so I think of my speech impediment not as a weakness or a disability, but as one of my greatest strengths.

My Instagram doesn’t cover my insecurities, my lack of self-confidence, that week I spent crying… there’s a question of whether I should be sharing that online.

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice.

One: whose shoulders do you stand on? And two: what do you stand for? These are two questions that I always begin my poetry workshops with students because at times, poetry can seem like this dead art form for old white men who just seem like they were born to be old, like, you know, Benjamin Button or something.

My mom wanted to make sure I was prepared to grow up with Black skin in America.

I think that’s the challenge of our generation: if we are all technology natives, how do we live with influence both online and off, and how do we make sure that both of those aren’t lacking in some type of deeper human connection and substance?

When you’re someone who’s lived a life where certain resources were scarce, you always feel like abundance is forbidden fruit.

To hone my voice, I read everything, from books to cereal boxes, three times: once for fun, the second time to learn something new about the writing craft, and the third time was to improve that piece.

You don’t have to be a poet, you don’t have to be a politician or be in the White House to make an impact with your words. We all have this capacity to find solutions for the future.

The oration of poetry, I consider to be its own art form and tradition.

Let each dawn find us courageous, brought closer, heeding the lights before the fight is over.

Most of my life I was particularly terrified of speaking up, because I had a speech impediment, which made it difficult to pronounce certain letters, sounds, and I felt like I was fine writing on the page, but once I got on stage, I was worried my words might jumble and stumble.

As a young black woman, I notice at times in the mainstream media framing of the ‘me too‘ movement you see a white female face or a white male face, and that type of questioning and interrogation needs to happen.

I am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.

It’s this weird binary where I’m getting media images and narratives thrown at me all the time through something I hold in my hand, and that’s never happened to other generations. But also with this little object in my hand, I have the ability to document police brutality, or post about the Syrian conflict on Twitter.

Poetry is the lens we use to interrogate the history we stand on and the future we stand for.

Poetry is interesting because not everyone is going to become a great poet, but anyone can be, and anyone can enjoy poetry, and it’s this openness, this accessibility of poetry that makes it the language of people.

Poetry has never been the language of barriers, it’s always been the language of bridges.